


heart on your sleeve like you've never been loved (running in circles now look what you've done)

by highfunctioningsociopath (RUNNFROMTHEAK)



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: AKA Sherlock says no to drugs and yes to sex and John's not going to be very happy, Addiction, Angst, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Awesome Irene Adler, Endgame Johnlock, F/M, Hurt Sherlock Holmes, Irene is a great friend who is a little bit in love and who can blame her honestly, Jealousy, M/M, No Beta We Burn Like Sherlock's Heart, POV Sherlock Holmes, Pining Sherlock Holmes, Post-Episode: s03e02 The Sign of Three, Pre-Episode: s03e03 His Last Vow, Sherlock Holmes Has Feelings, Sherlock Holmes Is Not Okay, Sherlock Holmes Loves John Watson, Sherlock Holmes is Bad at Feelings, Sherlock Holmes is a Bit Not Good, Sherlock is Not a Virgin, Sherlock-centric, Temporarily Unrequited Love, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-14
Updated: 2021-02-14
Packaged: 2021-03-15 23:35:45
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29444202
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RUNNFROMTHEAK/pseuds/highfunctioningsociopath
Summary: Your pet seems to have found a new leash, Mr. Holmes. Dinner?Consolatory, with that ring of crimson-lipped amusement so often lacing her texts.(We’re not a couple,John had said.Yes you are, Irene had said.I’m not actually gay,John had said.Well I am. Look at us both.Irene had said.)He wasn’t mine. SHHe sends it before he can overthink it.Her response is just as fast.Yes he was.***Sherlock’s an addict, and if he can’t have cocaine he might as well have this.
Relationships: Irene Adler/Sherlock Holmes, Mary Morstan/John Watson, Sherlock Holmes/John Watson
Comments: 11
Kudos: 33





	heart on your sleeve like you've never been loved (running in circles now look what you've done)

**Author's Note:**

> So this is my first WIP for this fandom and I'm so excited to hear everyone's thoughts! Also, please know that Adlock is temporary and Johnlock is endgame, but I adore people that go beyond sexuality (i.e. Sherlock being Irene's exception) and think they have a really lovely dynamic. Also, John's such a jealous bitch and I need more of that. No clue on update speed here, but this fic needed to be written and my brain wouldn't let me say no <3
> 
> Not betaed or britpicked, but if there's someone willing to help britpick my Sherlock fics I'd love you forever <3

It starts right after the funeral dressed up as a wedding. Tables of decorations he’d picked, dishes he’d selected, color pallets he’d painstakingly coordinated and plotted. John and Mary’s song, weaved from his tears and his blood spilt like ink over the dancefloor as his violin grieves with him.

She’s pregnant. Sherlock smiles, as the best friend is meant to, and John smiles, as the father is meant to, and Mary smiles and it’s all _normal_ and _proper_ and Sherlock’s frozen before she pulls John away with something so horribly knowing in her eyes, before they kiss sweetly on a dancefloor he’d helped pick and lose themselves in throngs of friends and family.

He’s never been more alone than when John dances away from him, his pretty bride in his arms, his normal friends and normal family surrounding him. Molly’s with her fiancé, Mrs. Hudson’s with friends, Janine’s with a guest he’d deleted after their incredibly _boring_ interview, and Lestrade is chatting up some pretty woman without a brain cell to her name. Sherlock’s always alone. Mycroft’s tried warning him. Mrs. Hudson’s tried warning him. But he, not for the first time where John Watson is concerned, had seen but not observed.

Sherlock forces himself to smile, a bitter, broken thing his brother would know for the falsity it is were he here, and he leaves their song in an envelope as a parting gift. His violin is innocent, leaned carefully alongside its case, bow neatly slotted next to the envelope, but hateful. Sinful, almost, like the song had corrupted it, _tainted_ it. It’s all so _bloody_ hateful, and Sherlock can’t stand it. Can’t stand a _thing_.

For all his brilliance, he hadn’t heeded those warnings. The _end of an era_. The _they get married_ , _I warned you_. It’s a crime, really, his monumental stupidity. Because none of it clicks until two becomes three and three leaves out four and the meaning of living _apart_ forever sinks in with all the subtlety of The Woman. He smiles a fake smile, and he hates his brother for knowing this. For seeing it before he could, for offering (in his own overbearing way) an alternative to the drug-laced spiral he’s sure Sherlock will go down.

But he doesn’t want cocaine right now. He doesn’t want his racing thoughts to race beyond his control, to whip around like neutrino particles helplessly colliding and dying and not stopping no matter how much he wants them to. Heroin wouldn’t be any better, nor ecstasy, and he’s always hated hallucinogens and downers for the limitations they instill upon him. For the way they make reality and fantasy and nightmare melt together.

Sherlock shakes his head, gathers his Belstaff coat from the stand and wraps it around himself, neglecting to pick up that violin. His beloved violin, whose chords still resound in his chest like a bullet shredding each and every internal organ. He’s still bleeding, and his beloved instrument has made that all too evident, so he can’t bear to touch it. Not now. Not yet.

Maybe not any time soon.

A quick glance around the room shows that no one is watching, that he’s safe from John’s scrutiny and Mary’s perception and Lestrade and Molly and Mrs. Hudson’s knowing, _pitying_ glances. He’d picked this. He’d helped build this.

For the first time in his life, he’d done something entirely _un_ selfish and he’s never hated himself more than he does now.

The night air is chilling where it tickles his exposed skin, leaving trails of goosebumps up and down his neck. He’s numb to it, numb to it all, as he has been for most of the day. His brain once again presents the _brilliant_ idea of a 7% solution, but he tosses it immediately.

 _We would never do that to John Watson,_ he’d told the mysterious _Major_ Sholto. And he’d agreed, because they’d both looked and _known_ , both looked at John and Mary with that same type of grief and looked at each other and seen a fellow mourner.

We _would never do that to John Watson._ It wouldn’t do to be a hypocrite, not over an issue such as this. Not when Mrs. Hudson might stumble upon him and resort to something drastic, stage some intervention with John and Mary that would only make letting go and bowing out all the more difficult.

Because that speech had been a handkerchief at a passing ship, a farewell to everything once known and pined for over those two years. He’d promised he’d say those three little words if.

If he lived. If John still cared. If he kept his tongue in Serbia when they threatened to cut it out.

If if if, bloody _if_.

Somehow, for all the rooms in his palace dedicated to John, he hadn’t planned for a girlfriend.

Correction: he hadn’t planned for a _fiancé_ , which implies a permeance _girlfriend_ lacks.

He’d planned for another halfwit with the personality of a brick wall. He’d planned for a squeamish secretary with a fondness for cats. He’d planned for a pretty girl eager to settle down, but without a sense of humor or ability to satisfy or tolerate John Watson’s darker edges.

He hadn’t planned for Mary Morstan, who can match their black humor and knows skipcode and tolerates Sherlock and even _likes_ him. Somehow, she likes him. Thinks he’s important to her since he’s important to John. She _encourages_ their friendship and cases and trust.

 _I’ll talk him round_ , she’d promised him when he sat there, heart on the pavement, stitches bleeding through and broken like his nose. She’d seen him, and Sherlock had wanted to _hate_ her for it, but she’d been so bloody _nice_ about it. Compassionate rather than pitying.

Luckily, he _had_ planned for tonight, for the itch he’s not allowed to scratch, and has a pack of cigs tucked neatly in one of his coat pockets. Sherlock hails a cab with one stuck between two lips, not yet lit.

“No smoking in the cab,” the cabbie says with a glare when Sherlock slips in.

He rolls his eyes and shuts the door a bit harder than necessary.

“221B Baker Street. Fast and I’ll tip.”

A grunt as acknowledgement, and they’re off. Normally, after Moriarty’s temporary tenure as a cabbie, Sherlock studies his driver. Looks for threats where any might exist. But right now, he doesn’t care. Doesn’t want to know the man’s life story told in affairs and mistakes and faults. Doesn’t want to know which hand he uses to bring himself off while perusing porn and magazines. Doesn’t want to know a _thing_.

Instead, he watches the skyline and the buildings. Counts the streets and landmarks as they pass by. Recalls rainy nights racing through streets with John at his side. Hearts pounding, minds racing, perfectly aligned and in sync and _together_ in a tangible, inseparable, eternal way. A series of crystalized moments, things he holds dear and grieves the loss of.

221 Baker Street is gloomy as he steps out of the cab, a manifestation of the tightly coiled _ugliness_ in his chest that stuns him. He almost forgets to pay, but the cabbie remembers, so Sherlock throws a few notes at him and exits. His Belstaff swivels with him, flaring out in a way he normally appreciates, but can’t help finding too _much_ in this moment.

Sherlock swallows sharply, feeling the harmless air fill his thoracic cavity naturally, but still stinging along his edges. Still cutting against his throat, over his tongue, as he lights the cig and takes a drag.

 _I’ll burn the heart out of you_.

Oh, what he wouldn’t give for a good distraction. For Moriarty’s puzzles or tongue-twisters, for something clever he can throw himself into carelessly. For something he can drown in, and something he can drown his sentiments in.

 _I’m prepared to do what ordinary people wouldn’t do, prepared to_ burn _…_

And burn he had. Burns still felt now, aches ever present and immutable like the bitter undercurrent lacing their watered bridges. He and John had been a matched set, a fixed orbit of binary stars caught in each other’s gravity (a metaphor he’d only learned for John, because he could never delete anything John Watson-related and so the solar system and astronomy at large decorates John’s rooms), feeding on each other, burning bright together. But Mary had been a different cosmological phenomenon, one with a stronger pull when his own star dimmed and weakened. John’s star merged with her dense darkness, accelerating to match her deceleration, and Sherlock had been left to ricochet into the great unknown, dim and cold and _alone_.

They had been a matched set, but no longer.

Now, he’s a lone star rapidly expanding to a point of no return. Now, he’s dying if only internally, and he’s so tempted to make it a beautiful death, to burn bright and hot and loud and fast and send the world into disarray with his chaos.

( _Brilliant. Genius. Amazing. Excellent._ Trite, utter shit, meaningless adjectives tugging at his heart like the chords of his violin)

He’d do it so beautifully, he knows. There’s an elegance in decay – the only true inevitability, really – a simpleness to it that Sherlock admires. He’s a chemist, he lives in a world of flux and decay and catalyzation and reaction, but it’s the decay he most admires. Constant. Reliable. Simple.

So _unlike_ sentiment and the people that arouse such frivolity.

He slots the key into the locked door and opens it with a push, applying a bit more force than necessary. It slams against the hallway wall, a loud _smack_ that resonates throughout the (thankfully) unoccupied building. Mrs. Hudson is still there, of course. Why wouldn’t she be? Happy days and all that.

He throws his Belstaff and suit jacket across the couch carelessly, looking at John’s chair and wanting, for one insane moment, to light it on fire and let something _else_ burn for once. Moriarty and John and Mary and the world be _damned_.

Sherlock stares at the ugly thing, patchworked and stained and comfortable. He thinks of discarded newspapers and loose-leaf teas and lazy mornings in and late-night TV and that one night where things had gone topsy-turvy and Sherlock had been so terribly confused and conflicted because _I don’t mind_ and he hadn’t the courage to question what, precisely, John hadn’t minded (considering he normally _minds_ a great deal). He thinks of bandage-wrapped ribs and blood stains and gun-powder coated fingers and bullets and rubbing alcohol and a variety of wounds. His soldier and his doctor and his best-friend and flat mate and more than he’d _ever_ known how to say ( _…it takes John Watson to save your life_ ). He thinks of the past and the things he’d held close when he’d needed them and what he’d thought would be _always_ and had only been for a short while. Gone before he could appreciate it fully, gone when he’d needed and wanted it the most.

He doesn’t burn it, but he does remove it. He shuts it up in John’s old room, chokes on the dust particles like punishment filling his lungs, and locks it tight in reality and memory. There, he can ignore it. Can act like that armchair and its owner never had such meaning in his sad little life, like he never felt the weakness of _sentiment_.

_Most important day of my life…_

And oh, how those word _hurt_. What he wouldn’t give for a good murder right about now. A good robbery, kidnapping, trafficking, torture, _Moriarty_. Extortion, money laundering, _anything_. What he wouldn’t give for an _anything_.

And, as though the universe had been listening, his phone gives off that familiar ring tone.

“ _Aaaaah,_ ” the Woman’s text alert moans.

Sherlock Holmes is an addict; he always has been and always will be. Knowledge had been the first substance he’d indulged in, before cocaine and codeine took over. John had seeped in his system like a top-tier designer drug and had left him with withdrawals worse than heroin. He’s already decided against cocaine and heroin. Against a well-earned relapse and beautiful, blinding supernova of blissful self-destruction.

Sex is a different shade of craving, one he’s not afraid of or unfamiliar with for all his brother’s musings. He’d never responded to her flirtations, but that had been a shade of flirtation in and of itself. Intellectual stimulation, an extravagant seduction because they both _love_ mind games.

( _I would have you right here on this desk until you begged for mercy twice._ )

Sherlock smirks, a petty thing to himself; ( _Witness Protection_ , John had told him, thinking her dead. _In America_. And oh how _grand_ it feels to know something he doesn’t, to know she’s alive while he doesn’t. It feels brilliant, the way only a dirty secret can, and he wonders how John would’ve reacted if he’d stayed long enough for the alert to disrupt his perfect wedding.)

_Your pet seems to have found a new leash, Mr. Holmes. Dinner?_

Consolatory, with that ring of crimson-lipped amusement so often lacing her texts.

( _We’re not a couple,_ John had said. _Yes you are_ , Irene had said.

 _I’m not actually gay,_ John had said. _Well I am. Look at us both._ Irene had said.)

_He wasn’t mine. SH_

He sends it before he can overthink it.

Her response is just as fast.

_Yes he was._

Sherlock has nothing to say to that, and they both seem to sense it, so she sends a second text.

_You crave distraction, detective, and I’m sure coy remarks won’t register entirely so I’ll be a tad indelicate. I want to have you._

Sherlock reads it over twice.

_Who says I want to be had? SH_

He pictures her coquettish grin, porcelain teeth flashing predatorily.

_You’re replying, aren’t you?_

_Perhaps I’m bored. SH_

Her lips are crimson in his mind, and he recalls her eyes when he’d taken her pulse, wet and warm and so terribly _human_ under his touch, heart skipping a beat, skin hot and solid.

_And the only mystery to solve is that of sentiment. We both know you lack the expertise to arrive at any conclusions._

A jab, as per their games, and an offer in one. She knows sentiment, feels things for him he’s wondered if he’d ever be capable of reciprocating, and she’s offering. Offering _dinner_ , offering _more_ going by her patterns. She knows he’s bored and probably knows he’s a bit heartbroken, so she'd texted.

And for once, he’d responded.

They both know what it all means, Sherlock’s only pretending they don’t.

_221B Baker Street, come if convenient. SH_

A pause, a memory and pen never offered and a scratched-up phone followed by deductions and praise and a want for things he’s never been allowed. A _married to my work_ and a _not his date_.

It had been romantic, that candle. He wonders if he’d been the only one to feel it.

_If inconvenient, come anyway. SH_

Irene’s response is as she is – smoke-shaped seduction without affirmations of any sort.

_Oh Mr. Holmes, you do know how to make a girl feel wanted._

* * *

The thing is, people assume he is a virgin.

People assume he’s never held a predilection for mysteries of all sorts (not just the gruesome ones) or been a slave to neurotransmitters and slow-release hormones. They assume he’s never felt a craving for skin like an itch, never entangled his sweat-laced limbs with another’s. They assume he’s pure of all but cocaine and passing highs, and it’s mostly Mycroft’s fault people perpetuate it. Because his big brother had never known at the time, never watched him fall prey to flesh-coated highs, never heard his obsession with parts and noises and that oh-so-sweet release no matter who or how or why.

Because he’d treated sex like a cigarette and choked on the fumes, had shagged men and women and found a preference for the former and an occasional exception for the latter. He’d sold his virginity like a bargaining chip in a back alley off Northumberland Street and scrubbed his skin raw trying to forget under the heat of a shower head; sex doesn’t _alarm_ him. He’s had it, done it, breathed it, lived it.

But cocaine took over, and then the Work satisfied him, and sex became a pointless thing except when necessary. Sherlock had experimented and collected as much data as possible, and after it just seemed… _less_. Carnal, sure, occasionally interesting, often stimulating, but there had been so many other things to do. Things not requiring an insufferable partner who might want _more_ or might talk too much.

There had been a fairly dissociative quality to the sex; a separation of intellect and skin and flesh. He hadn’t exactly been Sherlock Holmes, but he hadn’t been any identity fabricated or procured for cases. He’d been more and less than human, shaky and sweaty and vulnerable and _weak_ for urges uncontrolled.

Kicking cocaine isn’t hard but kicking sex had been hell. Touch-starvation is painful, a biting loneliness that he’d fought through for years while leashing all baser motivations like _sleep_ and _hunger_. Lust and longing had no value, so he repressed and succeeded.

This is a certifiable relapse, and he’s sure Mycroft knows it too by now. He’s sure Mycroft has a whole room filled with monitors and cake for him to watch on his great fat arse as Sherlock is once again _involved_ and far too close.

This is a relapse, and he’s eager for it. Goosebumps prick at his skin despite the lack of a draft, and there’s a low hum to him, pulse regular but strong. In his mind, his violin plays a jaunty tune, one with sharp peaks and valleys that’s fast paced and eager. Telling, so terribly telling, but he’s beyond care now.

There’s no ring of a disposed doorbell, no knock and a Mrs. Hudson letting her in. For a moment, she isn’t there. The flat is silent, TV off, fridge quiet and subdued, kitchen absent of experimental bubbling, no John to let out sounds and noises or complain, no clients to blather and blunder stupidly. For a moment, she isn’t there, and then she is.

Irene Adler’s hair, for once, is down. It’s a sign of relaxed guard he knows, for she normally wears her hair like a crown atop her head, regal elegance so easily above the droves of hormone-driven men and women craving a loss of control. She looks beautiful with it down, a touch warmer and more approachable than crowned curls.

Her lips are her signature red, ticked to the side in a smirk. Her nails match the shade, stark against the black bag she holds lightly. Her dress is skintight and black, almost like a sexed-up version of funeral wear, or the reverse of a bridal gown. The lace trails after her like a train, and her cheekbones are softened in the low lighting as she peers through her lashes.

“Mr. Holmes,” she greets, slipping towards him and dropping the bag on the ground. It gives a small thud, and he doesn’t need deductions to understand what’s in it.

He hums and thinks of the last time they’d been this close. Thinks of the aborted execution, her eyes sparkling and fond, her pulse erratic and excited. The _almost_ and _maybe_ and the thought of John waiting that had aborted it, aborted any thoughts of companionship beyond chastity and the taste of his name off her tongue.

( _He’s lucky,_ she’d said, something like understanding in the cock of her head, the calculated drag of nails on his skin. _Does he know?_

Sherlock never denied the rumors, never said _not gay_ or _not together_ or anything of the like.

 _No_ , he says, because she already knows and she’s not alive enough to tell anyone that matters.

_Will you tell him?_

_No_ , he says, because he’s unwilling to risk such a precious thing for human error, for urges that ought to be leashed and caged and forgotten, deleted, erased.)

“Miss Adler,” he answers, a shade warmer than his usual greetings for people.

“Oh I _have_ missed you,” she announces, nails around his wrist in a possessive grip, warm form pressed tightly into his. Her lips are soft at the corner of his mouth, brief and hot as she pulls away with that knowledge in her eyes. She wants him, and he just might want her too.

More than anyone else he’s allowed, at any rate.

“Dinner?”

( _Dinner?_ Asked with a grin, because he’s an idiot who gets his kicks risking his life, and somehow John’s the first one to _see_ him and they’ve only just met.

 _Starving_ , John had replied, every bit as stupid and cheery as Sherlock.)

“Starving,” Sherlock replies in a deep timbre.

He pictures, for a moment, John’s eyes narrowed on Irene. The curl of his snarl when he’d said _you’ve texted him a_ lot _!_ Sherlock recalls that flush of embarrassment and forced silence following a _yes you are_ , and the way he’d tracked every text enough to count.

( _Jealous?_ Sherlock’s always wondered that himself. Possessive, surely, and maybe jealous too. Sholto had been evidence enough of a different strand of not-gay Sherlock had failed to consider, even if it’s too late for it to matter any.)

Irene’s teeth flash, and her hands tangle in the nape of his neck, twisting his curls around her fingers and pulling him down so his mouth hovers over hers, no more than a hair’s width apart. She smells like Dior and champagne this close, a light spritz that’s enticing and expertly applied. There’s a hint of cinnamon in her scent too, a little blot of darkness he’s curious to explore. Curious to see if it’s in her skin or on her tongue, if he can taste it too.

“What will your doctor think?” she teases, a soft whisper in the silent apartment.

Sherlock wonders if the dust will tell this story to John whenever he comes back. If he’ll see the disturbance made by two people, the outline of a chair moved and high heels by the door, the gaps where clothes had fallen, the hints of a scent long gone from someone other than Sherlock.

( _I consider myself married to my work_ , he’d said, but celibacy is tiresome and he’s ready for an affair, for some good-old-fashioned infidelity even if the Work isn’t sentient enough to murder him for it. How fitting for the Work to give way to the Woman.)

“I’m hardly the expert on him anymore, what with the new wife.”

Her breath cascades over his face, eyes flitting over his features knowingly.

“Jealous?”

It isn’t cruel or cold. It’s soft, fond almost. A sad melody like those his violin had released in weeks prior. The crescendo to the climax, wet notes and low songs and tears he’d been unwilling to admit to. Jealous is a hollow word, meaningless and paltry compared to what he feels.

It’s something a bit like grief, a beast clawing in his ribcage, a burn in his blood and a sting in his eyes. It’s an unfulfilled want, an unsatisfied need. It’s a los so great he can hardly put it to thought. An emotional blow he’d been wholly unprepared for.

( _Nothing’s going to change_ , John had promised. They both know it’s a lie. Mycroft and Mrs. Hudson know it’s a lie. It’s the end of an era. The conclusion of John’s need for him. He’d healed the man at first, cured the limp and the tremors, granted him a purpose, given him a friend…and now that’s no longer needed.)

It’s a bit bitter too, because he’d spent two years craving John and come back to another woman and a London that had moved on.

( _Bitterness,_ he’d once said, _is a paralytic. Love is a much more vicious motivator._ And if you mix them…)

He closes the space between her lips and his without a reply.


End file.
